2013 – the struggle for a nuclear free, liveable world
It might be too late to prevent heating of the planet, the upheavals of climate change, and the horrors of nuclear accidents, wars, and the slow spread of ionising radiation.
But it surely is too early to give up on trying.
I am not optimistic. We know that cigarettes and asbestos cause painful, fatal cancers. The Western world is learning to abandon these killers. Yet the tobacco and asbestos companies are thriving, selling these to the “developing” nations – a pernicious form of 21st Century colonialism. So the slow killer of fossil fuel pollution continues. The fast killers of nuclear accident, nuclear war become more likely, as well as the slower killer of spreading ionising radiation. The over-developed world is all too happy also to sell these killer technologies around the world.
2013 is the pivotal year. In the words of Redgum, an old Australian band - “If you don’t fight, you lose”
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This month
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http://www.cleanenergymap.gov.au/ Clean Energy Future – Australian Government
- AUDIO Miners falling short on Indigenous consultation: Oxfam http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-17/miners-falling-short-on-indigenous-consultation/4696040
- and this Nuclear future unclear for Lucas Heights. http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/05/16/3760616.htm?
Youtube: From Fukushima to New York: Continuing Dangers of Nuclear PowerAnti nuclear action below: - more info at Action Australia « Antinuclear and at Event details « Antinuclear
EVENTS -
- Now - until June 2 – Melbourne PROTEST! ARCHIVES FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives/exhibitions/protest/index.html
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May 25 – Tennant Creek, Northern Territory March and Music for Muckaty NO NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP- Six years on and still strong! http://www.facebook.com/events/326459734149343/
- July 24-26 - Brisbane - Clean Energy Week
Australia’s anti nuclear hero – Dr Helen Caldicott
As I write this, Dr Helen Caldicott is in Korea, keeping a commitment to lecture there, despite the tense political/military situation. In recent weeks, she has lectured in USA ,and Canada, following the landmark symposium “The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident” http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf# which she organised in New York in March. Christina MacphersonHelen Caldicott MD The single most articulate and passionate advocate of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises, Dr Helen Caldicott, has devoted the last 38 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction.
Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1938, Dr Caldicott received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide Medical School in 1961. She founded the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital in 1975 and subsequently was an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and on the staff of the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, Mass., until 1980 when she resigned to work full time on the prevention of nuclear war.
In 1971, Dr Caldicott played a major role in Australia’s opposition to French atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific; in 1975 she worked with the Australian trade unions to educate their members about the medical dangers of the nuclear fuel cycle, with particular reference to uranium mining.
While living in the United States from 1977 to 1986, she co-founded thePhysicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. On trips abroad she helped start similar medical organizations in many other countries. The international umbrella group (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) won theNobel Peace Prize in 1985. She also founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) in the US in 1980….
IN the United States in 1995, Dr Caldicott lectured at the New School for Social Research on the Media, Global Politics and the Environment, hosting a weekly radio talk show on WBAI (Pacifica), and becoming the Founding President of the STAR (Standing for Truth About Radiation) Foundation.
Dr Caldicott has received many prizes and awards for her work, including theLannan Foundation’s 2003 Prize for Cultural Freedom and 21 honorary doctoral degrees, and she was personally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize byLinus Pauling – himself a Nobel Laureate. The Smithsonian has named Dr Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th Century. She has written for numerous publications and has authored seven books, Nuclear Madness, Missile Envy, If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth(1992, W.W. Norton) and A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography (1996,W.W. Norton; published as A Passionate Life in Australia by Random House), The New Nuclear Danger: George Bush’s Military Industrial Complex (2001, The New Press in the US, UK and UK; Scribe Publishing in Australia and New Zealand; Lemniscaat Publishers in The Netherlands; andHugendubel Verlag in Germany), Nuclear Power is Not the Answer (2006,The New Press in the US, UK and UK; Melbourne University Press in Australia) and War In Heaven (March 2007). Dr. Caldicott’s most recent book is the revised and updated If You Love This Planet (March 2009) updated 2012 as Loving This Planet
She also has been the subject of several films, including Eight Minutes to Midnight, nominated for an Academy Award in 1981, If You Love This Planet, which won the Academy Award for best documentary in 1982, andHelen’s War: portrait of a dissident, recipient of the Australian Film Institute Awards for Best Direction (Documentary) 2004, and the Sydney Film FestivalDendy Award for Best Documentary in 2004.
Dr Caldicott currently divides her time between Australia and the US where she lectures widely. She founded the US-based Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI), which evolved into Beyond Nuclear. Currently, Dr Caldicott is President of The Helen Caldicott Foundation/NuclearFreePlanet.org, an educational outreach project that informs people of the dangers of nuclear power and weapons. The mission of the Foundation is education to action, and the promotion of a nuclear energy and weapons free, renewable energy powered, world….. http://www.helencaldicott.com/about/
Few speakers can match Dr. Caldicott’s ability to simultaneously educate, entertain and ignite an audience. Senator Edward Kennedy has called her “one of the most eloquent voices on earth” and actress Meryl Streep says “Helen Caldicott has been my inspiration to speak out”. http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/dl/caldicott_bio.pdf
Are Australian women less focused on a healthy planet than Canadian women? So proud of their children and grandchildren but not willing to step up and speak out? Or are they just too busy breaking the glass ceiling and joining the unsustainable growth of wealth creating ventures, that may destroy our planet and their offspring to boot?
WOMEN’S ACTION AGENDA 21
PREAMBLE: TOWARD A HEALTHY PLANET
http://www.iisd.org/women/action21.htm
“Noting alarming increases in levels of radiation from man-made sources in our air, water, soil, and space,
Concerned at the rising death toll from nuclear power accidents, exposure to nuclear wastes and other radiation emissions,
Aware that women’s breasts and uterine tissue, fetuses, and children are particularly vulnerable to radiation-induced cancers and disease,
We urge that new nuclear research, development, production, and use be stopped, that uranium mining be halted, and that nuclear power production and use be phased out and replaced by environment-friendly energy.”